Research: How atheists have adopted social media

Hello everyone. This is the first post in a series of bulletin board discussions that you may or may not have read about when partaking in my survey (which can still be taken here: http://kwiksurveys.com?s=LLIIIL_93dd86f3) or in email notifications. For those of you who are unaware of my research, I am an undergraduate studying at Cardiff University, Wales, UK, and I am researching how you use social media as atheists and what impact it has had on your lives through a series of surveys, bulletin board discussions and interviews. I will be asking questions relating to how and why you use social media to engage with other atheists.

Everyone who is a member of Think Atheist is welcome to contribute - even if you do not begin to contribute at the earlier stages of the discussion do not hesitate to add your point at a later stage. This thread really is for everybody - even if you are not a regular contributor to the forums, or just like to read the forum discussions. I would like to encourage participants to discuss topics with each other as well as respond to my initial questions. When taking part in this discussion I would like participants to consider:

Personal experiences and feelings

Personal opinion on how social media has affected atheists as a group

What, if any, improvements could be made to the way you currently engage as atheists

To start I would like to ask:

Some believe that atheism is an individual phenomenon. Why is it important that atheists engage with each other as a group? Why do you choose to engage with other atheists?

I am also looking to recruit interviewees to take part in private instant messaging interview for the third stage of my research. These interviews will be completely anonymous and I will be asking more personal questions than in the bulletin board discussions. If you would be interested in taking part email me at sherihall@btinternet.com or send me a personal message.The findings and conclusions of my research will be printed as part of my dissertation and will not be used for any other purpose. Your contributions may be quoted verbatim in the write up of this research. You can choose to withdraw your participation at any time and if you would like your contribution to be removed from the data you have until May 4th to notify me. All participants will remain completely anonymous in my publication, although I would like you to bare in mind that bulletin board discussions on Think Atheist are accessible to the public and so for this exercise your level of anonymity may be limited.